Princeton NEWSLETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS Spring 2008 Letter from the Chair Classics Flourishing at the Core Inside this issue… t has been who are a joy to work with. They are News from the Faculty ................................2 a busy year accomplished teachers as well as research- Ifor Princeton ers: Luca Grillo won one of the Graduate Faculty Bookshelf .........................................5 Classics, and I am School’s four annual teaching awards last delighted to be year. Results are still coming in from this Princeton’s Numismatic Collection..............6 able to bring you year’s job-seeking season, but as I write up to date on our we are proud to congratulate the follow- Graduate News ............................................7 activities in this, ing students for their success in having Association of Ancient Historians ...............9 our third News- teaching positions in the fall: Jessica Clark letter. We have a (California State University, Chico), Luca Denis Feeney, Chair “The Language of the Gods” in Greece ....11 new editor, Yelena Grillo (Amherst College), and Pauline Baraz, who has taken over from Marc LeVen (Yale University). We are indeed Alumni News .............................................12 Domingo Gygax, and who has worked with privileged to work with the scholars of the the peerless Donna Sanclemente to produce next generation in this way and to enjoy Senior Theses ............................................13 this issue: warm thanks to them both. the remarkable intellectual fertility that Dissertations ..............................................14 Our undergraduate program, the core animates the corridor in East Pyne. of our mission, continues to flourish. The On the faculty front, there is much to Class Day 2007 ..........................................14 spike in concentrators of the last three years report as well. We look forward to welcom- looks as if it is no statistical fluke. We cur- ing Nino Luraghi here in the fall of 2008 Lectures ......................................................15 rently have 18 juniors and 19 seniors major- as a senior colleague in Greek history. ing in the department, and the total of 40 or Nino’s wide range of outstanding schol- Photo: D. Sanclemente thereabouts looks like a new norm, com- arship will add yet more strength to the pared to the 20 to 25 we had been used to. remarkable group of ancient historians al- Our majors are among the finest students ready in place. We welcome Marc Domingo the University has. In the Class of 2007, Gygax to the tenured ranks of the faculty, 9 of our 23 seniors were elected to Phi Beta and we look forward to the arrival in the Kappa. We congratulate Harvey Lederman fall of Janet Downie, a new appointment ’08 on winning a Keasbey Scholarship for as assistant professor in Greek literature. two years of postgraduate study in clas- A glance at the “News from the Faculty” sics at Cambridge University. Many other (p. 2) and the “Faculty Bookshelf” (p. 5) undergraduates are taking classics courses, will show you how active our faculty are as responding to the rich array of offerings scholars and members of the profession. we mount every year. By the end of this Although I use this letter to bring you academic year, we will have taught 925 un- up to date on what is happening inside our dergraduates in all of our courses, thereby department, I am always keenly aware of establishing a new record over our previ- how much we owe to the numerous other ous highest total of 920 in 2005–06. Our units at Princeton with whom we share discipline is flourishing in schools, colleges, joint interests in the ancient Mediterranean. and universities across the country, and we The vibrant Program in Hellenic Stud- are very proud to be playing our part. ies is a focus for all those interested in the The department’s graduate students are a group of dedicated and energetic people See Letter from the Chair on page 5 . Princeton Classics News from the Faculty Since joining the department in September, Yelena Baraz has completed an article on Euripidean allusion in Vergil’s Aeneid (forthcoming in Classical Philology) and has been revising her book manuscript on the cultural and political dimensions of Cicero’s philosophical project. Her paper on transformation of superbia will appear in the Brill volume Kakos: Badness in Classi- Yelena Baraz Ted Champlin Marc Domingo Gygax Denis Feeney cal Antiquity in summer 2008. At the APA meeting in January, she delivered a paper precepted for Brent Shaw’s lecture course After finishing a long project on sanctions on Cicero’s defense of philosophical transla- on the Roman Empire and taught a fresh- against memory, published as The Art of tion. Several lexicographical articles she man seminar on “Truth and Objectivity in Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman wrote for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, Ancient and Modern Historiography,” a Political Culture (University of North Caro- including pomerium and pol, were pub- lecture course on “The Greek World in the lina Press, Chapel Hill) at the very end of lished in the latest fascicle. Her short paper Hellenistic Age,” and a graduate seminar on 2006, Harriet Flower embarked on a new “Revelations of Lexicography: The Daily “Greek Democracy.” study of the city of Rome during the repub- Learning at the Thesaurus” has appeared in lican period (509–49 B.C.). Her research the Paragraphoi section of TAPA. She has ❆ will explore how the city was administered thoroughly enjoyed teaching at Princeton at the grassroots level and what life was like in her first semester, in particular a course Denis Feeney published two articles on in the local neighborhoods (vici) of Rome. on Seneca for advanced undergraduates, Roman religion and literature, one on She will be drawing on a variety of sources, and getting to know the classics community religion in historiography and epic for Jörg including literary and historical texts, ar- at Princeton, not least through her exalted Rüpke’s Blackwell Companion to Roman chaeological evidence, local monuments and position as the editor of this Newsletter. Religion, and the other on religion in Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus in Literatur inscriptions, coins minted in Rome, and evi- ❆ und Religion Vol. 2, edited by Toni Bierl et dence for religious practices at small, local al. He published two reviews in the Times shrines, which were often to be found at the Ted Champlin is on leave this academic Literary Supplement and one in the London crossroads. A particular focus will be the year, working with his NEH Fellowship on Review of Books. He took part in the honors roles of freedmen (former slaves) as civic Tiberius on Capri. The bad news is that he examining at Swarthmore in spring 2007 leaders in neighborhood communities. She has written only three out of nine chapters. and gave lectures in Cleveland, London, has particularly enjoyed the opportunity to The good news is that he has prepared two and Chicago, together with a paper at a teach courses about the city of Rome, both long and one short papers for publication. conference on Rome’s civil wars in Am- to graduate and to undergraduate students Even better, in the pursuit of Tiberius he herst in the fall (“Doing the numbers: the in seminar settings. During the 2007–08 will be a visiting scholar at the American mathematics of civil war in Shakespeare’s academic year, she is serving again as Academy in Rome for six weeks in the Antony and Cleopatra”). In April 2007 he departmental representative in charge of the spring. Lectures this year include Toronto, co-organized the fourth annual “Corridor undergraduate program. The department Columbia, and St. Andrews. In the spring Latinfest,” now a fixed part of our calendar, currently has around 40 undergraduate of ’07 he served as acting director of the in which faculty and graduate students from majors, of whom 20 are seniors. During Program in the Ancient World and was the Penn, Rutgers, Columbia, and Princeton 2007, she gave papers about her research at main organizer of the annual meeting of the meet for a day-long informal seminar; this Yale, Metz (France), Amherst, University Association of Ancient Historians, a report time participants met at Rutgers to discuss of Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn College in on which appears on p. 9 of this Newsletter. the Priapea. New York. ❆ ❆ ❆ Marc Domingo Gygax completed the Andrew Feldherr’s academic highlights Michael Flower found the fall 2007 se- manuscript of his book Benefaction and for this past year include completing his mester to be an eventful one. He co-taught Rewards in the Ancient Greek City. The manuscript on the Metamorphoses as well as the Program in the Ancient World (PAW) Origins of Euergetism and signed a contract a conference on Roman representations of graduate seminar with AnneMarie Luijen- with Cambridge University Press. His most civil war at Amherst—where Princeton was dijk (Department of Religion). This year’s recent publication is “El intercambio de represented by no fewer than four speakers. topic was “The Language of the Gods: dones en el mundo griego: reciprocidad, He has also been at work on papers on Livy Prophecy, Oracles, and Divination.” This imprecisión, equivalencia y desequilibrio,” and Horace, as well as editing two histo- course is the Oxford-Princeton Exchange Gerión. Revista de Historia Antigua, 25 riography collections. As of this past fall, graduate seminar, and it was Princeton’s (2007): 111–126. He has been working he has also taken over from Bob Kaster as turn to host three collaborative workshop on new papers on gift exchange, where director of graduate studies, a task he thor- meetings. The papers by the Princeton he deals with questions that could not be oughly enjoys and in which he will try not and Oxford students prompted a lively and discussed in detail in the book.